


Say When

by fourredfruits



Category: Inception (2010), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Inception, Crossover, F/F, Gen, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Possibly Steve/Tony
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-24
Updated: 2015-03-24
Packaged: 2018-03-19 11:02:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3607707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fourredfruits/pseuds/fourredfruits
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony falls into Limbo and Bucky goes after him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Say When

**Author's Note:**

> I just had this crossover idea and really wanted to write it.   
> It's a rushed thing and I didn't even go over it to check for grammar or typos.   
> I might wake up tomorrow and terribly regret not doing it but it's 3 in the morning and I have another final exam in six hours. Why is it that my finals week is not just a week but instead lasts almost three weeks?   
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy the idea (if not the fic, haha) of these two in inception universe.   
> I haven't read or seen any Avengers and Inception crossover but I think I'll go look for some later.   
> Tony can definitely buy his own airline, too.

 

It's like looking through someone else's eyes. All of his five senses are dulled. He can only faintly feel the frantic beats of his own heart and the cold chill at the back of his neck. His head turns sharply but he doesn't know why. The streaming sunlight simmers around them and he watches as thousands iridescent pieces of glass hang suspended in the air for a moment—it's a very long moment—before they start to rain down mercilessly. He quickly takes cover and shouts something. He doesn't hear or see anything for a while and his mind slowly slips away into darkness until his senses suddenly flicker back on again, like there is a switch or something, and he hears himself saying,

 

"No. You can't go after him. The team can't afford to lose you."

 

The words are directed to the man kneeling on the concrete floor next to him. The man is young, definitely still in his twenties, and despite his impressive physique—all broad-shoulders and solid muscles—his too-kind and bright blue eyes make him look harmless and unassuming.

 

But for some reason, he thinks the guy seems... important.

 

"We can't leave him like this, you know that. I _can't_."

 

The man bites down on his lips hard and his eyes are wet. There is a storm of emotions whirling in those inexplicably familiar eyes.

 

"We won't."

 

His voice sounds strangely determined when he tells the man. Though when he opens his mouth again, the heaviness has evaporated already and there's even a hint of laughter as he says,  

 

"But we both know that if I let you go down there, he's gonna fucking murder me. So do me a favor and you just go ahead, Steve. You have the rest of the team to worry about. I'll go get him back."

 

"No, what? No, I can't let you..."

 

"Wait for us on topside, alright?"

 

This time, his tone doesn't leave any room for argument. The man stares at him with his mouth slightly open and he stares back without blinking. A few seconds pass by and neither of them moves an inch. In the silence, the sounds of gunshots and footsteps are almost deafening. They're running out of time. There is a revolver in his hand and he brings it next to his left temple. The motion is casual and unhesitating as if he's done it countless times before.  

 

He thinks he smiles as he promises the man,

 

"Don't worry, Stevie. I'll bring him back."

 

And he shoots himself in the head.

 

 

-

 

 

His mind is highly disturbing to say the least. Sometimes it plainly freaks him out, the way he sometimes hears a nagging voice inside his head whispering something about a mission, the way he repeatedly dreams of killing himself in front of some guy, all of this seems to tell him that he's a complete lunatic who should be in a hospital.

 

Most of the time, though, he feels oddly calm for someone who doesn't even remember his own name. As long as his can remember, he's been living in this small, white, bare room with no furniture except a mini-fridge and a barely acceptable mattress pushed into the corner near the window. There's also a tiny bathroom with dubious stains on the floor.

 

Nothing in the room speaks anything about the person he used to be. The place is sterile and he feels like a ghost. No, that's not right. There is one thing, a picture.

 

It's a picture of a man dressed in a black T-shirt and jeans. His wide brown eyes are looking directly at the camera and there's a soft and unguarded smile on his lips. The guy in the picture doesn't even look remotely like the blond man— _Steve_ , he called him—in his dreams. When he looks at it, the voice inside his head gets louder. It wants him to do _things_ but he doesn't know what and honestly is afraid to know.

 

 _The_ _mission_ , it hisses in his ear.

 

What makes the voice much more threatening is the fact that even though he doesn't recall his own name, he knows who the man in the picture is. It's not something he remembers from before but something everyone who lives in New York knows. Because it's Tony Stark.

 

As if all of this is not creepy enough, his place is right across the gigantic tower the billionaire owns in the middle of New York. Was—is—he the guy's stalker? That seems like the most plausible conclusion he can derive from the meager clues. Tony Stark is a celebrity, after all. And it only adds to his suspicion that he can't seem to find that particular picture anywhere on the internet. There are tons of pictures of the billionaire on the internet but his smiles are never quite so sincere and never as open and vulnerable as in the picture.

 

It's doubtless that the picture was taken privately. He gathers it's either he was absolutely brilliant at stalking—it's scary how probable this sounds because he happens to have the most unusual and downright suspicious skill set—or, with much less chance, he knew the guy personally which would mean Tony Stark might know who he is.

 

And of course he wants to know who he is.

 

So when the four white walls becomes altogether unbearable, he goes to ask him.  

 

 

-

 

 

He feels exhausted and, well, somehow empty. Tony internally cringes at the choice of words because it just sounds too cheesy but yes, if he's being honest, he's been feeling exactly like the word for a while. It's not that he's unhappy or sad. It has more to do with how he sometimes suddenly thinks of something funny and looks up to tell it to someone only to find himself alone. It's weird because he never has anyone around while he is working, never had before, so really, why would he do that?

 

Tony thinks he misses things that he never even had in the first place and the problem is that those things are occasionally eerily specific and detailed in his imagination, like some strawberry-blond-haired woman who is as terrifying as she is beautiful, some gorgeous guy who dresses in dreadfully old-fashioned clothes and whose impeccable morality is also as terrifying, and,

 

Damn it, he's entertaining his perverted subconscious again. A smart, independent woman who can kick his ass? Sure. But why would his subconscious ever want to fantasize about moral excellence?

He had to seriously worry if he was going senile already. However, the tests declared his brain completely healthy and fully functioning. So a purely psychological issue it is.

 

That's how far his thoughts go until he walks in to find a strange figure sitting on one of the stools in his kitchen. His heart jumps to his throat and he almost lets out a shriek before he stops himself. It's a man—young, attractive, well-built, tired, edgy—and it seems like he was waiting for Tony because the guy's staring at him expectantly albeit a bit nervously.

 

"How the hell did you get in?"

 

It's the first thing he says because it should be impossible for anyone to break into his tower, let alone his private floor.

 

"I needed to talk to you. I would have booked an appointment but your people wouldn't let me."

 

"So you just decided to break into my place."

 

"Pretty much, yeah."

 

He guesses he should alert the security team now that someone has actually managed to but doesn't, because, you know, curiosity, cat, Tony Stark.

 

"Ok, I really hope you're just here to talk and not a serial killer or an environmentalist or both."

 

The stranger looks oddly disappointed but not at Tony's words but as if he'd been searching for something in Tony's face and didn't find what he was looking for.

 

"So you don't know me."

 

For a moment, Tony's mind whirls with a distinctively mechanical sound. Now that he thinks about it, the man looks vaguely familiar to him but he sees a hundred new faces each day, he can't remember all of them even if he's a certified genius.

 

"Should I?"

 

He asks hesitantly because when attractive people he doesn't remember approach him in private and says something similar to that— _so you don't remember?_ —, they tend to get a bit violent. The man shakes his head and forces out a small smile though it looks sad around the edges.

 

"No. I just hoped you would."

 

"Um, have we met before?"

 

"No. I don't know. I don't remember."

 

"What, are you saying you don't remember _me_ but you came to ask if I remembered _you_?"

 

The man fidgets on his seat and he suddenly looks heartbreakingly young and uncertain. Tony thinks it's his baby-blue eyes. They're so fucking pretty it kinda makes him forget that this guy could be a deranged serial killer for all he knows who is capable of breaking down Stark Tower's best security system.

 

"I'll just go now. I'm sorry I barged in uninvited."

 

When the guy puts his hand on the kitchen table as he pushes himself up from his seat, Tony catches a sharp gleam of metal and for a brief heart-stopping moment, he thinks it's a knife before widening his eyes for a very different reason than fear.

 

"Is that a _metal arm_?"

 

His voice is close to a shout as he gasps out in awe and surprise. The man turns to look at Tony and then glances down at his arm. A strange expression flits across his face.

 

"Yeah. I guess so?"

 

Tony doesn't care how weird the answer sounds because his mind is already fascinated by the intricate and elegant movements of the arm. It's a thing of beauty that he cannot take his eyes off. He wants to know how it works and feels a stab of reasonable jealousy by the fact that he isn't the one who made it.

 

"Can I take a look?"

 

The guy with the awesome metal arm blinks down at him and Tony stares back at him with what is presumably supplicating expression. Tony isn't really sure if the look worked but he soon shrugs his shoulders casually and sits back down.

 

"I didn't catch your name."

 

Tony says absent-mindedly as he probes the metal arm. The man easily offered to take off his shirt when they couldn't roll up the sleeve above the first few inches which means he is now sitting half naked in Tony's kitchen but well, stranger things have happened in his kitchen so Tony doesn't mind, besides, it doesn't hurt that the guy looks amazing shirtless.

 

"I don't really remember."

 

Tony looks up to quirk his eyebrows at that but the man seems genuinely upset and embarrassed.

 

"Like, amnesia?"

 

The man nods and Tony brings his eyes back down to the arm. He wonders if confusion is contagious because he's been studying the arm for five minutes and he feels as confused as the man appears to be. He can't really point out but there's something unsettlingly familiar with the arm as he learns more about it. The details and everything, they look like something he would have made. The last silent musing hits him like a lightning bolt.

 

Though he mostly scoffs at the unlikely idea, a part of him thinks _what if?_ , and this small throbbing part of him is more than enough for him to pick up the screw driver and carefully disengage the outermost layer of the metal plates on the inside of the elbow. He hears the mutters of half-hearted protest but ignores it in order to inspect the thin strip of alloy and when his eyes spot the codes engraved on it, he suddenly forgets to breath.

 

The other man tenses up beside him as well.

 

"What is it?"

 

The room stays silent for a long moment before Tony finds his voice. It sounds uncharacteristically composed when he finally speaks,

 

"I think I know your name."

 

The metal arm couldn't have been made by anyone else but him. He _invented_ the codes and he engraves them on every piece of machinery he makes by hand. There is a certain method to where he hides them and how he engraves them because he is a paranoid bastard and wants to make sure that what is his stays his. He has encountered too many crazy evil assholes who attempted to steal his technology in his life to want anything less than that. It's something he considers way more important than his own life because making sure that his technology doesn't fall into the wrong hands means more than simply making it.

 

What he sees on this metal sheet is a bit different, though.

 

Under the usual protocol is a name written in his own codes and he reads it aloud.

 

"James Buchanan Barnes."

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
